Visual Studio Service Pack Due

Visual Studio (VS) 2005 SP1, which will consist solely of bug fixes, is due by the end of 2006 and will be followed by a patch that will let developers run VS 2005 on Windows Vista. Besides Visual Basic (VB) 6.0, which Microsoft made a special commitment to support on Windows Vista, the combination of VS 2005, SP1, and the expected patch will be the only supported version of VS on Vista. Developers using older versions of VS and considering upgrading to Vista must also upgrade to VS 2005 or use virtualization technology such as Virtual PC or VMware.

The support policy affects only the VS tools, not applications built with those tools—previous versions of the .NET Framework are supported on Windows Vista.

Vista Compatibility Coming

All versions of VS are affected by some architectural changes in Vista. These changes make the OS more resistant to attack by malicious software and reduce damage from poorly designed software, but they also interfere with developer tools.

The most important change is the introduction of User Account Control (UAC), a feature that allows users to run with less than full administrative privileges, but to temporarily elevate their privileges as needed. When a user attempts to perform an action that requires administrative privileges, such as changing network settings or installing an application, Vista presents a dialog box asking the user to authorize the task. Depending on the OS configuration, the user may be able to simply click OK or may have to enter a password.